You put together a deck of 20 cards, max 4 of each. You don't actually draw the cards from the deck, instead every turn you get one a random card with the probability based on the number you have of every card to the total. You can never actually run out of cards and the same card can have several copies of it in play at the same time. You can only have 5 cards in your "hand" so if you have 5 and draw a new the oldest are dropped. You can pay one Action point to move the last card to the front to keep it from getting removed.

While this is a sort of a card game and as such randomness in draw does play a role it's not nearly as important as it is normal TCGs. Turns are fast and you draw a lot of cards (a normal game can often be 40+ turns). While you sometimes luck out and don't draw that clad or weapon you need it's mostly just a matter of waiting a few turns which is not such a bid deal as it might sound.

After some testing, I can confirm that Ironclad Tactics uses the card count as a probability, nothing more. This means that if you construct a deck of 20 cards, it isn't going to cycle through all 20 of your cards at a random rate before starting anew; each card has a prevalence set by the deckbuilder.

Like Hoshi said, there is a natural randomness to what you draw, but an interesting thing you must note about Ironclad Tactics is that few cards cause immediate effects (aside from Tactics, of course). All units start at one end of the land, and work their way to the other. There's plenty of room for your hand to give something useful.

Just note that it is very important to keep a balance between Ironclads and Parts for them. If you have a 30% chance of drawing an Ironclad, then your Parts should be no greater than that, since they are useless otherwise.

Since this card based are the hands drawn random each battle, or how does it work? I want to try the game, but I'd only play it with a friend and she's worried that the hands are random.

The draws are random, but the decks aren't. You construct your own decks of 20 cards out of the cards you've unlocked so far. As you progress through the game you unlock more cards, giving you more choices for deck building. You can build many different decks for different strategies and give them names. Before each battle you can either select an existing deck or create a new one especially for the battle.

Since each battle offers a different kind of challenge, you usually need to construct a new deck specifically to deal with it. Playing the battle will allow you to find out which kinds of cards are useful in that battle and which aren't. It may take a few attempts of fine tuning a deck before you figure out the best combination of cards to win that battle.

Once you've won a battle you can usually repeat it to satisfy further victory conditions which will win you more cards. Deck building is the key to winning this game.